The Call of the Wild: Klondike Cannibals, Vol. 2 (10 page)

But he knew he had no
real alternative.

He
didn’t know what they might do to him if he refused. And who knew, if they did take him along, he might always get the chance to recover his money at some later point.

So
he took the ten dollars, and they shook hands on it.

*  *  *  *  *

Just before midnight, Jack sent Eliza a telegram, paying three dollars out of the ten Merritt had given him to send a boy on a bicycle round to her house in the middle of the night.

change
of plans sailing at noon on argo pier
31
come see me off jack

Then he retired to Dr. Fiddler’s
cabin. It was panelled in dark mahogany and decorated with colourful French and Italian posters. Jack saw an ad for Martini & Rossi vermouth, and another of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, lit from below by garish Parisian limelight. The cabin wasn’t large but it was private, and far nicer than the sleeping arrangements Jack was accustomed to at sea.

He’d
always slept in bunks or hammocks—a couple of times even out on deck—but never in a proper bed like this. The softness of it seemed miraculous to him, especially after his rough night out on the streets, and he collapsed onto it wearily.

Billy was
curled up under a blanket on the cot in the corner, apparently sleeping.

Jack
didn’t know what to think. He knew he should be more wary, perhaps even prepare defensive measures against the gang, or even the boy. Who was to say that someone wouldn’t try to murder him in his sleep? This was a strange new world he’d entered, and he’d resolved to proceed through it with caution.

But
in truth, he wasn’t in any condition to coolly evaluate how much danger he’d put himself in, or to reflect upon the radical reversals in his fortunes over the course of the past few days.

As soon as he
hit the sheets he fell asleep.

*  *  *  *  *

Jack awoke to a loud knock on his cabin door.

At first he was confused
, not realizing that he wasn’t in his bed at Flora’s house until he looked over and saw Billy sleeping on the cot in the corner. Then it all came back to him. He sat up and blinked around at the cabin, lit by the soft blue glow of morning sunshine streaming through the porthole on the wall.

The knock came again, a little sharper this time.

Rolling out of bed, Jack crossed to the door and opened it. Outside stood one of the gangsters from the poker game the previous night: a billiard-hall bruiser with a lime-green vest and numerous scars on his face.

“Your sister is here,” the man grunted
, his red-rimmed eyes glaring from beneath an old burlap flat cap. His voice sounded like sandpaper, and his breath stank of anchovies.

“Of course,” Jack said. He
turned and closed the cabin door quietly behind him, to let Billy sleep in a little more. Then he followed the gangster down the hall from his cabin, and out on deck.

The crane on the wharf was
loading the
Argo
’s main hold with last-minute supplies, and a group of twenty longshoremen, under the supervision of Dr. Fiddler, crammed as much as they could on deck, so as to maximize transportation fees. In the light of day, it was obvious that the ship was being dangerously overloaded: it now sat so deep in the water that the lowest portholes were fully underwater.

Eliza stood at the bottom of the gangplank, h
olding one hand to the brim of her sun-hat, as she blinked up at the ship. Jack was keenly aware of her eyes upon him as he walked down the wooden plank towards her.

She
immediately spotted the bruises on his face.

“Oh, Jack!” she
said, reaching out to touch him.

“I’m ok,
” Jack said, grabbing her hands before they could touch his face. He didn’t want to appear weak. He glanced back up at the
Argo
, realizing how strange all this must seem to her.

“First, you don’t come home,” she said. “T
hen the telegram. A
telegram
, Jack! What have you gotten yourself into?” She looked fearfully up the gangplank.

Jack turned red
in the face. He could never lie to her, not to her face. Not about something this big. But how could he begin to explain it? He’d have to start with Annie—Sadie, he corrected himself—but he didn’t want to think about her.

He opened his mouth to speak,
then shut it again.

“I’ve got a job, actually,
” he said at last. “And passage to Dawson… It’s the All-Water route, the Rich Man’s route, and it’ll get me there weeks ahead of anyone heading over the Chilkoot…”

Actually, put that way,
it did sound rather impressive. He thought about how he would arrive in the land of gold with his strength intact, weeks ahead of the rush of prospectors flooding over the continental divide from Dyea or Skagway.

But
all his rationalizations and justifications couldn’t change the fact that,
technically
, he’d lost all of Eliza’s money. In one reckless, boneheaded moment. And was now working for the criminal gang that stole her money.

She looked him squarely in the eye
, and smiled. “You don’t need to say anything, Jack. I believe in you. We all do.” She stepped forward and hugged him tightly.

Jack w
as almost overcome with emotion as he wrapped his arms around her. But he fought it back.

“How is
the Captain?” Jack asked Eliza, after a moment, pulling out of the hug.

Eliza frowned.
“He’s still running a fever, but it seems to have stabilized…”

“No, I mean, how is he about all
this?”

Eliza sighed.
“He just wants a taste of adventure.” She shook her head sadly. “If you wrote to us, often, and your letters were really good—then maybe he’d feel like… I don’t know, like he was right there, beside you…”

“
I’ll write everyday,” Jack promised. He was filled with a sudden gratitude for everything she had done for him over the years. Then he thought of his father, and the probability that he wouldn’t ever see him again. “Look,” he said, with some difficulty, “I’d meant to say a proper goodbye to everyone, before I left. Would you—?”

“Of course,
” Eliza said, brushing a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.

They
said their goodbyes and hugged one final time.

*  *  *  *  *

Merritt was waiting for Jack at the top of the gangplank.

He was weari
ng another fashionably-cut suit with a matching tweed bowler hat, though of a distinctly different shade of burgundy than the day before. His moustache was freshly waxed, and he wore a cologne that smelled of jasmine.

“Your sweetheart
?” Merritt asked, looking down at Eliza, who still stood at the bottom of the gangplank.

“Sister
,” Jack said.

“Ah…
” Merritt raised one eyebrow. He doffed his hat politely for Eliza, and she nodded back, in turn. “Ready to earn your keep?” He pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet, and offered it to Jack.

Indian Jack stood
off to one side, leaning against a stack of crates, watching impassively, lazily holding a double-barrelled Greenfield shotgun at his side.

Can’t
really blame them, Jack thought. I wouldn’t trust me either.

He
remembered how fast the Indian’s hands had spun the shells around the gaming table, and vowed not to make any sudden movements. Don’t give him any reason to shoot.

“Yes sir,
” he answered. He reached out and plucked the bill from Merritt’s hand.

He
wondered what job he’d been selected for. Was he to be put on guard duty? Or perhaps they wanted him as a fresh-faced con man, a bright innocent you could trust in a den of thieves, until you realized he was the crookedest of all. The truth was, he was a little worried about it. Surely he wouldn’t have been given Dr. Fiddler’s cabin for nothing.

“Please—call me Merritt.
Sir
makes me sound mighty old.” He twirled the ends of his moustache with his fingers, a little impatiently, then whirled around, and started walking away. “I want to show you something,” he called over his shoulder.

Jack followed
Merritt through the maze of stacked supplies to a pair of waterproof doors near the stern of the ship, which were barred shut with a heavy metal rod. Merritt took a brass key chain out of his suit pocket, finally unlocking the doors, swinging them open, and disappearing into the darkness inside.

Jack ducked through
after him.

Just inside the door
Merritt grabbed a kerosene lantern hanging on the wall. He struck a long match to light it, then started down a steep staircase into the pitch-blackness below.

Jack fo
llowed, carefully navigating the narrow creaking stairs in the flickering light. Where were they leading him? He really had no idea what to expect when they reached the bottom. Would they put him to work shovelling coal? Or maybe—

There was a strange
, damp smell down here that he did not like.

Indian Jack slammed
the heavy doors shut behind him, and Jack jumped at the sound. The doors were bolted again, this time from the inside.

Jack felt
a tightness in his throat. What if they planned to lock him up down here? It would be a perfect way to get rid of him… He immediately thought of Poe’s short story, “The Cask of the Amontillado.” He shuddered, very aware of Indian Jack coming down the stairs right behind him…

They could easily drop
my body overboard in a day or two, he thought, in the middle of the night, and no one would be the wiser.

By the time he
reached the bottom of the stairs, Jack was more than a little jumpy. He could see by the lantern light that they were in a storage hold of some sort, though one seemingly unconnected to the ship’s main hold. Within it were several dozen crates and boxes from all over the world. Many were stamped with the names of their place of origin: Rangoon, Sidi Bou Said, Calcutta…

Merritt
hung the lantern next to a wooden crate about the size of a coffin. Then he picked up a crowbar and began prying open the coffin crate.

Jack’s muscles tensed. He half expected some strange creature to emerge, and attack him.

When the top came free, Merritt shifted it to one side. He reached his hand inside the crate to grab something. He straightened up, and put a small, smooth stone in Jack’s hand.

It was a piece of
amber. In the flickering lantern light Jack could see the alien forms of prehistoric insects trapped inside the golden liquid, frozen in time…

“
I picked that up from the oddest little curio shop in Cairo.” He took the amber from Jack, and placed it back in the crate. Then he lifted the lid back on, and pounded it into place with his crowbar.

As Jack watched, incredulous, Merritt
pointed at the boxes and crates, one by one, listing their contents: “Canned snails from Provence… Watch-spring dolls from Vienna… Bronze astrolabes from Alexandria… Pornographic woodblock prints from Japan… the finest Burmese opium…”

The selection of items was
mad, decadent, and as Jack listened the fantastical list grew longer and longer. Merritt explained that he’d just finished a whirlwind trip around the world—in less than 80 days—collecting the Earth’s rarest and most curious luxuries, to outfit the saloon he was building in Dawson City, the
Alhambra
.

When he
finished speaking, Merritt looked up at Jack, triumphantly.

Finally, Jack understood. “You want me to write about you,” he said.

“Very good, my boy,” Merritt said, his eyes glittering. “You see Jack, I’m just like you.”

*  *  *  *  *

Jack
had no doubt he could do it.

He
wouldn’t be starved for material: in fact, he was more than a little surprised that Merritt seemed so interesting. Not exactly what he’d expected the day before, when he was perched on the warehouse roof overlooking the dockyard square, dreaming revenge upon the gang who’d swindled him.

In many ways this was his dream come true. To get to go on the adventure path again by virtue of his pen, rather than by skinning seals or shovelling coal.

It was certainly a step up, maybe even better than landing a position as a newspaper correspondent. Plus Jack was terribly interested in learning more about Merritt and the inner-workings of his gang. This would give him yet another vantage point from which to draw his fiction, or sharpen his politics…

He kne
w the ten dollars a day Merritt had promised him in all likelihood came from the sum that’d been stolen from him. Put that way, the idea bothered him plenty.

And yet, was he materially worse off?

As long as Merritt fulfilled his end of the bargain, and supplied Jack with an outfit upon their arrival in Dawson, it was entirely possible that he would end up with more money in his pocket than he would’ve under the original plan he’d worked out with Captain Shepard and Eliza. He wouldn’t have to hire coastal Indians to transport his outfit from the ship by canoe to Dyea beach, or hire members of the mountain tribes to help carry their supplies across a mountain pass, or incur any of the incidental costs that they’d been planning and budgeting for, like buying a boat on Lake Bennett for the trip downriver.

Jack
did a quick calculation in his head. If it took them a month to sail upriver to Dawson, he would end up with three hundred dollars in hand.

So what if he
was being paid with his own money, if it got him to Dawson faster, and left him richer than he would’ve been otherwise?